State Employee Fired In Food Stamp Scandal; 1199 Union Worker

CHRISTOPHER KEATING

A state employee has been fired in the emergency food stamp fraud scandal after receiving $200 in benefits, officials said Wednesday.

The union worker was terminated for understating her income while applying for the federal benefits, said her attorney, Rich Rochlin. She has been employed as a healthcare worker for the past six years at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Rochlin declined to release the worker's name, citing attorney-client privilege and saying he has not been authorized by the client to release her identity.

Rochlin represents 17 clients who are under investigation for fraud, and the worker was the first of his clients who has been fired. But at least one other state employee, who is not Rochlin's client, has also been terminated, said Andrew McDonald, Malloy's chief legal counsel.

Rochlin's client, who is single, claimed no dependents on the emergency food stamp form following Tropical Storm Irene. She is among at least 74 state employees who have been under investigation for accepting emergency benefits on food-stamp debit cards that were awarded to Connecticut residents following the freak, pre-Halloween storm that knocked out power in some areas of the state for as many as 13 days.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has repeatedly said that state employees who broke the public trust and broke the rules will be fired and referred for state or federal criminal prosecution.

But Rochlin maintained Wednesday that the fired worker did nothing wrong, adding that he did not have the employee's annual salary.

"The instructions were she should include her base pay for only one month,'' Rochlin said in a telephone interview. "She explained that to them [in a closed-door hearing on her firing]. Apparently, they didn't believe her, and they fired her. ...This is shameful that this is proceeding this way when there was no intentional wrongdoing.''

He added, "There's no crime. She didn't do anything wrong.''

At this point, the fired worker is seeking to remain low-key.

"She's very private and does not want her name bandied about,'' Rochlin said.

Deborah Chernoff, a spokeswoman for District 1199 of the New England Healthcare Employees Union, confirmed that the worker is a member of 1199 at Connecticut Valley Hospital. She said she did not know the worker's name and could reveal little about her.

"Our job as a union is to make sure that person has due process,'' Chernoff said Wednesday. "We don't know what the state will do. There have been threats of criminal prosecution.''

The union's role is to protect the worker's employment rights, and she said it is "pretty automatic'' to file a grievance on any firing "to examine the process'' in order to get the worker's job back. The union does not have a role in any criminal prosecution, she said.

Chernoff said she did not know of any other 1199 workers who have been terminated as a result of the emergency food stamp investigation.

The food stamp case is unusual, she said, because firings are normally related to on-the-job performance, such as excessive absenteeism.

"I don't know that there is precedent for this particular kind of issue,'' Chernoff told Capitol Watch.

A spokesman for Malloy referred questions Wednesday to McDonald, who said he would not respond to any of Rochlin's allegations. He added that the Malloy administration will release further information about the food stamp cases either later this week or early next week. He added that the names of the 74 state employees who have been referred for disciplinary hearings are also being shared with state or federal prosecutors.

Rochlin said he has not heard anything from prosecutors or criminal investigators about any of his 17 clients.

"Nothing,'' he said. "Not word one. Zero.''

The fired worker was told to come down to the state office on Friday afternoon, January 13, for a meeting, where she was told that she was fired, Rochlin said.

Regarding the terminated worker and his other clients, Rochlin said, "We will dig in for a long battle with this administration.''

Rochlin stressed that the fired worker was not Lisa Prout, a state employee who went public in a news conference shortly after Christmas after finding out that she was the subject of a Loudermill hearing - which is necessary before a worker can be fired. Prout, represented by Rochlin, also filed a lawsuit that said that the Malloy administration had enacted an "unconstitutional gag order'' that was preventing Rochlin from investigating the case and preparing a defense for his client.

He said the firing of one of his clients is related to the lawsuit that was filed on behalf of another of his clients.

"This is direct retaliation for the lawsuit,'' Rochlin said.

Rochlin is accusing the state Department of Social Services, which administers the food stamp program, of muzzling its employees "to keep us from uncovering the truth" by an "unconstitutional gag order.'' He filed a lawsuit on behalf of Prout to overturn the administration's action. He cited a memo that was sent by an attorney for the department to DSS employees that ordered them not to speak to Rochlin about his investigation into suspected fraud in the food stamp benefits program.

Prout, a 45-year-old single mother who works at Connecticut Valley Hospital for the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, applied for the benefits at the DSS office in Middletown following Tropical Storm Irene and received $524. She is now being investigated by the state "for allegedly understating income and allegedly committing fraud to obtain such benefit,'' according to the lawsuit. State records show that, with overtime, Prout was paid about $82,000 in fiscal 2011.

Rochlin is seeking a ruling by a state Superior Court judge in Hartford that would rescind the memo, end the gag order, and allow Rochlin to speak freely to state employees so that he could prepare a defense in Prout's case.

After presenting her case in a closed-door hearing, Prout was still awaiting a decision Wednesday on her possible firing.

Rochlin previously held a news conference with Prout soon after Christmas when the state held a hearing that could lead to her firing.

"I would never risk everything that I have -- my career, my dignity, and my name -- for $524,'' Prout said at the time.